Thursday, November 15, 2012

Some Interesting Nuttery Here.

I've mentioned this guy before, this is the one who calls himself "the Voice of God" in the mangled King's Latin and makes no bones about considering himself the voice of God precisely because he is a White Christian Yankee. This most recent article of his touches familiar ground; the same old tripe about how every good American is required to submit to one true eternal belief system and governing philosophy in the name of freedom. But I think it does bring home a point made by Cory Robin and others about how the distinction between social conservatism and 'libertarianism' is mostly bunk. Both of these things are the result of White Men being raised to believe that it was our birthright to be unchallenged masters of our adult households; and then grow up to be truly shocked that the federal government should possibly have more day-to-day leverage over "our" wives, "our" children and "our" communities than ourselves. Those of us endowed with "centuries-old cultural traditions in which a dominant central government is considered a basic fact of life " might consider it a given that yes, the central government is bound to be more powerful than the 'Head of Household", not because of any philosophy of what government should be but because it is a government and you are one man; but this is only because of our own inferior cultures. These are True American Men you see, and it can only be due to alien conspiracy that they are not always deferred and catered to by everyone around them, including the State.

The belief that all truth must be pre-determined and eternal is a fascinating thing, whether it comes in the form of King-James-Onlyism, 'Strict Constructionism' or what have you. (Usually some form of all the above) There is to be sure the longing to live forever, to become immortal Leviathan through a 'pure' culture that is always static and a universally held belief system that is never challenged. But I think the main appeal of all fundamentalisms lies in the ego of dictating the eternal truth to perceived subordinates ex-cathedra. The impulse is the same whether they are perceived as subordinate due to race, sex, youthfulness, or income. And it's no accident that these fundamentalisms tend to be most popular among old privileged classes who are suddenly find their privilege challenged. The 'Religious Right' in the US has always found the meat of its muscle among upper-middle class White suburbanites, not among the lower-class rural 'hicks' as perceived in stereotype.

In the end there is in fact a kernel of truth in the doublethink of insisting that we all must do what the Eternal Truth/Myself demands in the name of liberty. A respect for liberty does sometimes require the surrender of one's own will out of deference towards the liberty of others. For those of us who were raised in Vox Day's unAmerican cultures this contradiction might be funny or even rueful but not intolerably painful. It is among those who have been entitled with 'The Rights of Englishmen' those who have been raised to believe that exercising their wills unencumbered would always be their birthright; so long as they held to the true and unchanging path, on whom the agony of egalitarian dissonance has fallen upon double fold.